Blog Entries tagged 'depression'

Here it is: our moment of economic truth. We're standing at that
historic fork in the road where the nation decides, now and for the
foreseeable future, whether it's going to hang on to the catastrophic
assumptions of the free-market fundamentalists and rely once more on
the nostrums that have so far failed to fix the mess, or take a bold
step down a new, more progressive path that will finally re-empower the
American people to build an economy that works for us all.

As
usual, the conservatives have absolutely no conscience about what they
did to create this mess. If they did, they'd all be holed up in their
gated communities or on their private islands, embarrassed into silence
at best and terrified of peasant uprisings at worst. Instead, they're
jetting into D.C. en masse in a last-ditch attempt to head the country
off -- or at least make sure that any money that does get spent ends
up, as it always has, in their pockets.

To that end, the
self-serving myths are starting to fly so thick and fast that the staff
here at CAF has been working full-time to keep ahead of them. Here's
some of what they're flinging in this latest B.S. storm -- and what you
need to know to fire back.

1. The proposed recovery package is too big.

False.
Most progressive economists agree (and Paul Krugman is downright
emphatic) that it's going to take a minimum of a trillion dollars of
well-placed investment to pull our economy out of this ditch. This is
no time for half-measures, blue-ribbon committees, pilot projects, or
trial balloons: this is a life-or-death crisis that requires immediate
and massive intervention.